Next Avengers

So Marvel.com has released the trailer for "Next Avengers" which is the fifth in a series of Marvel animated movies. Let me say that after watching the trailer, I smiled. Yeah I know what you're thinking... "you are a grown man getting excited about a cartoon movie?" Well, I smiled because I'm always excited about new interpretations of already established superhero characters. I loved "Exiles"(before the relaunch of the title), I loved "What If" and chances are I will really like "Next Avengers." These two comic titles explored new interpretations, amalgamated characters and alternate realities, all of which I love. This two and a half minute trailer makes it clear that the movie will explore these ideas.

So let's talk about what I see in this trailer: Five children who are told a story about the World Famous Avengers and how they were defeated by Ultron. (I love super-villains that are created by superheroes by the way!) At the end of the trailer, I watched specifically to see whose kids made the cut.

The 1st kid is seemingly the son of Hawkeye, dressed in plain clothes. The 2nd kid looks to be the daughter of Thor, toting gold Viking-esque armor. The 3rd kid is the son of Captain America and Black Widow and he coincidentally is dressed like Bucky. The 4th is the son of the Black Panther(and if you look closely in the trailer, Panther’s wife has white hair like Storm). I wish he had a better costume/look; you know, something that would look more like either the Panther or Storm. The last kid is the son of the Wasp and Giant Man and his design is the best by far. His costume actually makes him look like a little glowing wasp. Hopefully for the kids who only have one known parent in the film, the second parent will be another former avenger or an affiliate.

Let’s be honest, this movie looks like it’s going to be geared more towards kids and it will be cheesy. Now that Teen Titans has been cancelled, Marvel wants to swoop in and try to fill the void that’s left. I know this and accept it. Hell, I’ll even have it on reserve at Best Buy like I do with all the Marvel movies when they are about to hit the shelves. Besides, I like cheesy. Cheesy is timeless! I also welcome the change from the darker Marvel animated movies that have come out in the past couple years. So be like me and cross your fingers that it’ll be a great and cheesy movie.

Link to trailer:
http://marvel.com/news/moviestories.2966.First_Look%7Ecolon%7E_Next_Avengers_Animated_Movie

@~~}~~ Devin Peacock

WOLVERINE ORIGINS #23 (WHAT I DID NOT BUY THIS WEEK)

Those in my circle of friends know that I spend a lot of money each week in my local comic store and that I really do not make enough money to spend as much as I do. So I made a decision a while back to cut back. Of course this decision became so much easier when they re-launched Amazing Spider-Man a couple of months ago. I’m sure you’re up to speed that in order to save Aunt May, Peter and Mary Jane sold their marriage to Mephistos. In order for this to occur, the entire universe changed again in order to accommodate the fact that Peter never married Mary Jane. So in about 3 years, you’ve had the entire face of the Marvel Universe change 3 times. And this time was the last straw. I am almost 23 years old, and Marvel, after writing themselves into a corner for the umpteenth time, had erased the entire history of Spider-Man that I grew up with, by far my favorite Marvel character. I am too old to relearn a mythos. I just cannot do it. So in my mind, the world of the Amazing Spider-Man is dead. I cannot pick up that comic anymore. Then in a desperate attempt to catch everything up in Spider-Man’s world, they cancelled all his other series and are releasing three Amazings a month and made Amazing Spider-Girl a really alternative universe, not just a possible future. I’m afraid that Marvel has gone too far and that I can no longer read Amazing Spider-Man until someone at Marvel wakes the hell up. Then to add insult to injury, they made Peter even more of a loser than before, and Mary Jane a superhero. Just typing it here, makes my stomach turn over in disgust. I can’t write anymore on that.

Another comic I’ve had enough of is DC’s Flash. They killed Wally West. Then they killed Bart Allen but brought back Wally West and sped up the aging of Wally’s twins in order to give them powers and make West deal with fatherhood. Then they mixed in an alien invasion. I miss the days when it was the just the rouges and the Flash ran fast. I can’t read this comic anymore because they’ve added too much to it. I understand that the Flash has been struggling in sales and what not, but this is not fixing the problem. Adding new characters and twists when you are trying to re-establish a franchise just does not work in my mind because you lose a part of what made the comic attractive in the first place. I understand that the twists are supposed to try to add to the audience, but if you lose your original audience in the process, have you really won the day? The Flash runs fast, plain and simple. You want to give him a family, fine, but don’t add all this garbage surrounding them so soon to reintroducing Wally West back into this universe. It’s just too much to handle.

Finally, the last comic I did not get this week was Cable and Deadpool. Why you ask? Because they cancelled it. One of the best written comics in the Marvel universe was cancelled after issue 50 because it just did not have the following it needed which was a shame because I know the people who read it, myself included, could not get enough of Deadpool and Agency X. Of course, when Cable died briefly, they did a lot of random team-ups to keep the series afloat, and then with Cable doing his time-traveling thing again, you lost one of the main characters of the series, but Deadpool was far and away the reason why we read this comic to begin with so why not just re-launch it as Deadpool having his own comic. It breaks my heart to report that Deadpool is back to being a cameo king and plead for Marvel to being work on a Deadpool series again. Until then we will just have to keep reading Wolverine Origins. “What kind of a segway is that?” you wonder. Well, Deadpool has been in the last three Wolverine Origins trying to do the impossible. Kill Wolverine. At least, for the time being, I am getting my insane hijinx from our favorite Merc with a Mouth. This issue did not disappoint either. Everything you would want from a battle with Wolverine and Deadpool. Explosions, crazy fighting, shooting galore, and one-liners, OH THE ONE-LINERS!!! It is brilliant and the ending just leaves you cracking up as Wolverine has his claws in Deadpool’s sides and Deadpool has just blown out Wolverine’s brains, so there they are, supporting each other as they are catatonic as it is a race to see whose healing factor is superior when in the end it does not matter because neither one can kill the other. I cannot wait to see how this situation resolves itself. If you need a Deadpool fix like the junkie that I am, pick up Wolverine Origins and try to get the first two of this story arc because they are just as good. So that’s it for this week. Let me know what you think about Spidey, Flash, or the Merc with a Mouth and write back to us. Have a great one and keep reading.

-Ray Carsillo

Mighty Avengers #10 (HOW MARVEL CATERS TO OUR NEEDS)

The team up. Oh, how we as comic book geeks CRAVE it. Batman/Superman, Justice Society, Wolverine/Black Cat, and every other crazy combo you can think of. One of the most successful though has been the Avengers. Of course, after Civil War, Marvel took it upon themselves to get us even closer to team-up satiation by giving us TWO Avengers comics, New Avengers and Mighty Avengers. New Avengers follows the group that fought registration and Mighty follows the group that was for. We will look at the Mighty Avengers today since that is what came out this week and also I am going to try to figure out why we love these damn team-ups.

As with the great problem with Marvel, some of their titles are dreadfully far behind the rest of the story arc, and the first 8 issues of Mighty Avengers fell into this category until finally seemingly catching up in issue 9 where they track a symbiote bomb’s origin to Latveria, home of Dr. Doom. Now with Secret Invasion coming to the forefront of Marvel’s grand universal story arc, this looks like it will lead very nicely into that as Tony Stark continues to battle his paranoia and keep everyone else on the Mighty Avengers (aside from Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman, who brought it to his attention in the first place) in the dark.

In the previous comic, Iron Man, Dr. Doom, and the Sentry, are all sent back in time to about the 1960s where Sentry almost goes crazy as he sees himself fighting, what we found out recently, to be himself in the form of the Void. Our unlikely group of allies (again, another forced team-up via enemy of my enemy being my friend; in this case, the enemy being stuck in the 1960s, truly a horrifying foe) finds their way into the Baxter Building where they “borrow” Reed Richards’ time machine to make their way back to the future with explosive consequences. If you are going to get into this comic, now is a good time because the story arc is caught up to the universe and if you are a fan of Marvel, you will want to see what the heck Iron Man does with his Avengers and to find out which ones might be Skrulls. Overall, not a great comic, but it does further the story and leave you on enough of a cliffhanger to see what happens next by buying the next issue. If they had not caught up to the rest of the universe by now though, I would have probably stopped buying this comic. Pick it up and see where it takes you through Secret Invasion before maybe dropping it in favor of something else.

Now to our controversial topic. Why do we love team-ups? Is it the weird situation of having two people who would never normally work together, finding a way to co-exist much like we have to with many of our everyday co-workers? Is it the thought that the threat might be so great that you would need all these people just to handle it? Or is it that we just love to see all the different colors on one page after we lit one up? Marvel pulls this off more successfully and more frequently with having a far greater amount of teams and team-ups in their universe and it works 99% of the time (I’m sorry but Wolverine and Black Cat was just a little much for me). Or does DC’s characters stand well-enough on their own that they don’t need the team-ups? Respond fair reader if you dare! Also, feel free to express your thoughts on the above comic and corresponding review. We look forward to seeing your responses.

-Ray Carsillo

DC VS. MARVEL (and a review of Salvation Run #5 just for fun)

I’m going to start my first article by getting right into the good stuff; the never-ending battle between the big two. I came to this conclusion after reading Issue #5 (of 7) of “Salvation Run” by DC, a story showing what happens to the villains of the DCU when they are teleported to a mysterious planet with defenses that could kill them if they cannot put their egos aside and work together. Interesting story because it taps into an element we all love and which is rarely seen in the DCU compared to Marvel, team-ups. In this case it is especially sweet because it is every major villain we all know and love from Luthor to Joker to Giganta to Captain Cold, etc., etc. It also serves as a clean up act because it’s removing some more minor villains from the fold, like Psimon, by killing them off. Of course, in comics it does not mean it is permanent, but I understand what DC is trying to do.

In the comic, the story breaks off into two factions, a camp of crazies led by the Clown Prince of Crime himself, Joker, and another that is working on trying to get off the god-forsaken rock led by good ol’ cue-ball, Lex Luthor. If you have been reading this, then keep doing so, it is only getting better. If you haven’t, try to find the first four issues and catch up! All I will say is that now a spy has been ousted and the origin of this deadly planet has been revealed in this issue. I’m such a nice guy, leaving out any spoilers for you fine people.

Anyway, back to the main point of this article though. It is that the two warring factions made me realize something about DC. DC has their villains and heroes very clear cut. Good vs. evil, black vs. white, snow vs. sunshine, mayonnaise vs. mustard, with little or no shades of gray. Even in this particular comic, the two warring villain groups are very clear cut. Marvel on the other hand, strives on shades of gray. The X-Men fighting issues of race and whether they should do what’s right for themselves or for mankind. Spider-Man always trying to do the right thing and help out as many as he can while choosing to sacrifice his morals or time spent with his loved ones. Civil Wars have erupted in the Marvel Universe over things that remind you of the Patriot Act, and although many people side with the rebels in the comics, interesting to see how few did anything in real life. Personally, I prefer DC because comics have always been an escape for me and the clear cut sides helps me to forget about my troubles and the real world, even if only for 15 minutes. If I wanted all the shades of gray, I wouldn’t read comics and would go run for mayor or something. Now here comes the time to decide on which is better. Well go ahead. The decision is completely up to you. I can’t tell you what decision to make. I can only give my opinion. Do you want the shades of gray? Or do you prefer the clear cut sides given in DC? I want to hear from you so go ahead and respond! Marvel vs. DC! DC vs. Marvel! Let the debate begin!

-Ray Carsillo